


Jesus, Take the Wheel

by GuenVanHelsing



Series: Two-Wheel Bicycle [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky is a confused and confusing character, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Multiple Personalities, Not a religious fic even if the title sounds like it, Starts on the helicarrier and goes from there, mentions of torture, non-explicit violence, supposedly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:35:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1647212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuenVanHelsing/pseuds/GuenVanHelsing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier is the one with the mission. Bucky’s just along for the ride.<br/>Until he isn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> General Winter Soldier spoilers…?  
> I own nothing, nothing, nothing  
> I own nothing but the feels and self-inflicted pain

The Winter Soldier is yelling, telling someone that it isn’t right, he doesn’t know them, they’re a lying, lying bastard, and Bucky wonders why it’s all so close to his ear. He’d been asleep for so long; it wasn’t often that the Soldier needed him for something. Little things, like whether to flirt with a waitress or slit her throat. How to properly do his tie, his hair – things Bucky remembers but the Soldier can’t seem to retain. The Soldier is fluid, focused on the current mission, relying on Bucky in the little moments when he can’t remember can’t remember can’t remember and Bucky does remember so he can pull him out of his broken record trail and keep him on the rails. It’s surreal, that Bucky is the one sleeping through the years and the Soldier is one doing the actions, and Bucky wonders who chose him to be the guardian angel of an assassin.

                Maybe guardian angel was the wrong choice of words. Bucky didn’t watch over the Soldier, didn’t protect, he just offered the occasional bit of advice, when the Soldier saw fit to wake him. It didn’t really make sense to Bucky, why the Soldier would need this information, the when, the why, and as the times changed around him he wondered how long the Soldier was planning on living, as everything got brighter and shinier with every moment he was drudged to the surface.

                But the Soldier is insistent, he needs Bucky _now_ , and Bucky opens his eyes, blinking through a film of smoke and sparks and his metal arm is raised, hesitatingly in motion, above the bleeding, battered face of Steve Rogers.

                _No_ , murmurs Bucky, _don’t hurt him_ , and the Soldier stands down, he’s going to stand down, Bucky can’t let his charge hurt Steve –

                The Soldier catches the broken rail of something just in time, and Bucky watches as Steven Grant Rogers plummets away from him in a haze of debris to splash into cold, cold waters far below. And the Soldier doesn’t hesitate when Bucky tells him _go go go_ and they follow Steve into the watery depths.

 

\--

 

 _Steve is safe_.

                Bucky starts at the words, and they’re repeated, tonelessly and calm, as the Soldier is apt to be. The Soldier has set the broken, bleeding form of Captain America on the edge of the beach, not quite out of the water but enough that the current won’t drag him back in. Water runs from his open mouth, and he’s breathing, and Bucky finds that he can breathe too, and the Soldier is walking away, leaving Steve to the shouting and the sirens and the lights that find him soon after.

                _Steve is safe_ , repeats the Soldier, and Bucky is surprised to find himself still listening, still there. The Soldier hasn’t dismissed him, but neither has the Soldier asked him for anything. He was merely stating a fact.

                _Objective complete_ , says the Soldier, and if his voice was a smidgeon satisfied, then Bucky must be imagining things.

                _What was your mission_? Bucky had never asked, never dared to wonder. He didn’t _want_ to know the things the Soldier did with his tips and tricks, where the Soldier took those people whom he smiled at and what would happen to them because of it. But this, _this_ was Steve. He needed to know about Steve, about this strange new future where everything was bright and hurt and Steve Rogers wasn’t dead from old age.

                _Save Steve_ , the Soldier replies. _Mission objective: save Steve_.

                Bucky recalls the hint of awareness from their last speaking, an elderly man insisting that this was the last mission the Soldier was needed for, and the man insisting that the man on the bridge had been from an earlier assignment, not to worry his pretty little head about it, just finish the mission.

                _You were supposed to kill him_ , Bucky says, and the Soldier shrugs.

                _The success of the mission is always inherent on your advice_ , says the Soldier. _You have not led me astray yet_. _Do not hurt Steve, you said, so I did not hurt Steve. You told me to go after him, and I did. That was the mission, was it not_? _Save Steve_?

                Bucky’s head hurt. He didn’t have a head _to_ hurt, and it still hurt. The Soldier was grumbling, pressing metal fingers to his forehead and cursing, and Bucky realizes that he’s still there, he’s inside the Soldier’s head, where he’d been all along, and the Soldier was still waiting.

                _That was the last mission_ , the Soldier informs him. _Operation complete. What is the next mission_?

                Bucky can feel the ache in his left shoulder, the heavy pull of an arm that isn’t his. The drip of water from soaked hair onto equally soaked clothing, clothing that’s too tight and constricting. Bucky lifts his arms and sees familiar flesh, not so familiar metal, and suddenly the Soldier is _gone_ , like he has before, but this time there is no sleep, there is no darkness, there is only Bucky standing alone in a forest in unfamiliar clothes in an unfamiliar time and the scream of twisted metal still echoing in his ears as the final helicarrier crumbles into the river.

 

\--

 

“Don’t panic.”

                The first words Bucky says, the words forming on a loose tongue that doesn’t seem to want to shape the vowels as he knows them. The words come out garbled and rough, and he says them again and again and again until they lose their meaning and float seamlessly around his head, no longer audible. After all, why should he be panicking? The Soldier was missing, it was Bucky in control of a body not his own, and _Steve Rogers_ was alive. No need for panicking, right?

                There’s a gouge in the branch of the tree he’s sitting in that fits the shape of his metal hand, and he knows otherwise.

                Bucky’s first order of business is to jump the first guy he sees. A slouching man, baseball cap tugged low over his face and hands jammed into his pockets as he trudges up the path. There’s no one else around, and Bucky drops from the tree, knocks the man out with a single punch, and strips the man of his clothes before he sees the blood on his hand, realizes that the single punch had knocked a few teeth loose and broken a nose and the object of this violence is lying nearly naked in the middle of a gravel path choking on little gasps of breath.

                Bucky swears, leaves the bloody man there in his underwear and tennis shoes, and takes off back into the trees. There are more people now; slow, methodical people who are clearly searching for something as they talk to themselves on handheld radios and someone is talking about dogs, bringing out the dogs, and Bucky clutches his stolen clothing to his chest and walks until his feet take him to the docks.

                There’s a little boat bobbing in the water, unmanned and quiet, and Bucky ducks into the covered cabin without thinking about the lock on the door, which breaks under his fist anyway. It’s dark inside, but Bucky has enough light from the half-closed door to work at the constricting leather armor – seriously, if the Soldier wore this all the time, how could he _breathe_ – and soon he was wearing a baggy shirt under a baggier jacket and too-tight jeans that rubbed uncomfortably but Bucky wasn’t about to steal underwear right off of a body and he could handle the lack of underwear for a while.

                _New objective, find underwear,_ he says, but there’s no answer from the Soldier.

                He sorts through the pockets of the armor, finding all sorts of knives and guns and ammo, more than he knew what to do with, so he kept one gun in the back of his jeans and loaded his pockets with bullets he hoped would fit and jammed as many knives as he could into the heavy combat boots he hadn’t had the heart to discard. Bad enough he was dumping the Soldier’s armor, the least he could do was save him from breaking in new boots.

                Hysterical laughter reaches his ears, and it takes Bucky a moment to realize it’s coming from him. Here he was, worried about the owner of the body he was borrowing breaking in new boots, after he’d just mugged a guy for the clothes off his back. Steve would have been so disappointed, given him that brokenhearted stare that was worse than his dad’s anger when he messed up, worse than the kicks from the army sergeants before he was the one doing the kicking, worse than _pain screaming needles pain hands holding him down so much pain make it stop make it stop no no please no stop_

                Bucky opens his eyes again and he’s lying on the floor of the boat, there’s sunlight on his face streaming in from the open door and in an instant he’s on his feet, a knife in his hand and fear tight along his spine, but there’s no one there. He is alone, on a boat, in stolen clothes in a stolen – borrowed? – body, and there were no needles or hands or screaming. He hoped he hadn’t been screaming, because _that_ was sure to alert someone he was there.

                He wondered if the Soldier had been the one screaming for them to stop, and he wondered if they ever had.

 

\--

 

Bucky’s hungry, his stomach growling and the tantalizing scent of food wafts from the store every time someone walks through the door, a paper bag or a clear container in their hands. No one seems to notice a grubby man with a grubbier baseball cap eyeing the pastries in the window and wondering how hard it would be to steal them with this many people around.

                His fingers have been worrying scraps of paper in the pockets, and when he pulls them out his eyes go wide in surprise, because forty dollars is a lot of money, more money than he could make in a month at the factory, and he couldn’t believe that someone would go around carrying that amount of money in their _pocket_.

                His stomach growled again, and Bucky sent a mental thank you to the poor bastard he’d stolen this small fortune off of and entered the store.

                Small fortune for Bucky, maybe, but not to this strange shop of horrors. Every pastry he had eyed in the window cost its own small fortune, and he snorted in disgust at the cost of bread. His stomach rumbled louder this time, however, and he forced himself not to grimace as he handed the lady behind the counter enough of the green bills to cover the purchase of an entire loaf of delicious, crusty bread which he’d save half for Steve because it had been a while since they’d had good bread.

                It took a single bite to remember that he didn’t need to save half the bread for Steve. It took two more before he remembered that Steve wasn’t waiting for him back at the flat. Four bites in and he felt like he wanted to puke, because he’d left Steve lying in the mud not two hours before, but his hunger was greater than his nausea and even that went away when he was done with the bread.

                The rest of the money was crammed into his boot between two ceramic knives that dug into his ankle with every step. It felt wrong to brush the crumbs off his sleeves, felt wrong to keep his left hand tucked securely in his jacket pocket, felt wrong to not be going home to a waiting blond-haired angel, felt wrong not to be sitting in a cold trench waiting for the bombs to fall –

                _Stop_ , said the Soldier, and Bucky stopped, hands trembling and feet faltering, and there’s noise, noise everywhere because he’s standing in the middle of a street and those too-bright, too-fast cars are blowing their horns and bearing down on him like he’s a deer in the headlights. Bucky moves, sidesteps a car that barrels on with the lingering blast of a horn, and Bucky wonders when it got so bad that you didn’t stop to check on the guy you almost mowed down in your fancy vehicle. Someone asks him if he’s all right, a pretty dame in a neat business suit that reminds him of Peggy Carter, but the Soldier is whispering in his ear, insisting that he keep moving, get out of there, and he dismisses the concerned woman with easy charm and smooth grace and eases himself out of the crowd and into the tiny alley between a pawn shop and a stack of apartments so high he’d get a crick in his neck just looking up at them.

                Bucky sits on the top step of a fire escape, the rusty metal creaking under his weight and his hand steady on the brick wall, and he asks the Soldier what his mission is.

                The Soldier just repeats his question back, as if Bucky is in charge, as if Bucky should know what’s going on. Bucky is in a dream where Steve Rogers is alive – if he survived those injuries, almost drowning, if – and the world is the future and now he’s in it.

 

\--

 

The Soldier isn’t much help. One time Bucky falls asleep, and when he wakes, he’s in an entirely different room, with new clothes and a fresh wad of cash in his pocket, and he doesn’t recognize the skyline outside the window of his tiny room. Another time he wakes up in a room full of people, snoring, smelly people who seem more intent on sleeping in great mounds of heat than on attacking him, but Bucky is out of the building and pressed up against a wall four blocks down before he remembers to check his pockets, and he isn’t surprised that his money is gone.

                The latest blur in his memory finds him in a park, on a bench, sitting listlessly and watching and old woman toss bread to a family of waddling ducklings and their mother. Bucky stared at the scene for a long moment, before the Soldier interrupted his mindless musings.

                _Are you Bucky_?

                And that sets Bucky back on his heels, rocking in his seat and smacking his elbow against the backrest of the bench. It hadn’t occurred to him that the Soldier didn’t know who he was, and then it occurred to him that _he_ didn’t know who the _Soldier_ was.

                _I’m Bucky_ , he replies, because that’s the only thing he does know, and he asks _Why_? because how would the Soldier know his name if he was just a figment of his imagination?

                _Bucky Barnes_ , says the Soldier. _James Buchanan Barnes. Steve is your friend. Steve is Steve Rogers and Steve Rogers is Captain America and he is your friend_.

                Bucky didn’t know what this meant, what it could mean, and suddenly the Soldier is on his feet, walking away from the old woman and her bread and her ducks and they’re in front of the Smithsonian where the posters are a taller than he is and they’re all about dinosaurs and mummies and Captain America.

                _Steve_ , says the Soldier, and Bucky is nodding and walking up the steps, and he’s through the doors and the metal detectors and it only came to him a moment later that he should have been concerned about his conspicuously metal arm when the man after him sets off the alarm with a pocket knife. The Soldier is laughing in his head and Bucky follows his feet to the Captain America exhibit, where he finds the misinformed data and the blown-up photos and the massive paintings on the walls that couldn’t do the justice to the Commandos like Steve would’ve done in charcoal pencil on coffee-stained paper snagged off a sergeant’s desk. He finds the uniforms and the memorabilia and all sorts of video footage of him and Steve and just Steve being Captain America and all of them in uniform fighting the good fight and when he turns a corner he finds himself face to face with _himself_ , and he’s reading of how they were best friends and that he was the only Howling Commando to give his life in battle and Bucky catches his reflection in the tempered glass and it’s _his face staring back at him_ -

                The next time he comes to, Bucky is lying in a too-soft bed and the Soldier is talking in his ear and all Bucky can do is lie on the mattress that’s bowed under his weight and cry because he’s Bucky and the Soldier and this body wasn’t borrowed after all.

 

\--

 

His neighbor has a radio going, so loud that he can hear the tinny quality clearly through the wall and it’s so loud that he can’t think. Bucky can’t focus on why this is important, why he _should_ be thinking, and Bucky doesn’t want to get up, move, anything that would make it real that this is his body and that he’s the one out of time, not the Soldier.

                _Who are you_? he asks, and there is no answer, not that Bucky really expected one. The Soldier had been quiet after Bucky had woken up and stopped the endless flow of tears, and hadn’t made an appearance since. Bucky wondered if the Soldier was in that sleepy dark place where Bucky had been, and then he wondered how many years it had been while he was asleep and the Soldier had been awake.

                _I don’t know_ , says the Soldier, suddenly, unexpectedly, and the Soldier is sitting up, swinging booted feet off of the soft covers and standing, even when Bucky is dizzy and doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to stand. The Soldier is up and moving around the tiny apartment, searching the ice box and the cupboards for food and finding nothing. _Eat_ , says the Soldier. _We need to eat. Mission: find food. Mission approved_?

                _You don’t need my permission_ , says Bucky, but the Soldier is silent, waiting, and Bucky sighs aloud and walks to the door, the Soldier checking his weapons and Bucky is out the door and down the street before he remembers that it wasn’t his apartment and he didn’t remember getting there in the first place.

                Bucky has settled into a comfortable booth at the coffee shop, back to the wall and a mental map of all the escape routes, and the waitress has brought him coffee and breakfast and he hadn’t had to say a thing, just pointed to the menu options at random and hand over the proper amount of money that she asked for. He smiled at her, and she gave the tiniest smile in return, and she moved on to the next customer, leaving him alone.

                _Twenty-five years old, approximately_ , says the Soldier as Bucky sips his coffee. _One child at home, works the day shift during school hours and a night job while it sleeps. She’s wearing another uniform under her apron_ , he says, when Bucky is skeptical. _Probably doesn’t have time to change after picking up the kid. Weary at the eyes, she doesn’t get enough sleep. Two jobs, probably for a child. Parents will do the… strangest things for their children_.

                Bucky doesn’t ask how the Soldier knows this, why he knows this. _Do you know her_?

                The Soldier is quiet for a moment, then, _No_. Not a previous target, or collateral, then. Bucky laughs a little into his coffee, a tiny huff of breath that barely qualified as laughter, but he’s laughing louder on the inside, and the Soldier hears him. Bucky drinks his coffee and thinks about death, and the waitress works to feed a six-year-old boy and the radio is still blabbing the same station as the neighboring apartment and Bucky doesn’t care about the fact that scuffs on baseballs changes the trajectory depending on what side they were on and the Soldier wonders if you could kill someone if you threw the baseball hard enough and none of it matters a minute later because Steve Rogers walks through the door and Bucky is still drinking his coffee.

                “Just coffee today, Marie,” says Steve, looking perfect and normal and not like he had been bleeding on the bank of a river days – how many days had it been? – and the waitress is smiling and taking his order and Bucky chokes on his coffee. The liquid is still too hot and scalds his throat on the way down, but the Soldier refuses to cough and Bucky sits in agitated silence and takes another sip as Steve smiles at the waitress and finally looks around the shop, eyes flitting over the various occupants and shifting right past Bucky as if he’s invisible.

                Not invisible enough, apparently, because Steve’s eyes go wide and he’s staring with that kicked-puppy gaze and the minute he starts to move towards Bucky the Soldier is on his feet, and Steve stops, seeing the knife, and the waitress drops Steve’s coffee, and Bucky hopes she won’t get in trouble for the amount of coffee that spills all over the counter and the floor.

                “Bucky?” says Steve, his voice breathy and soft and Bucky has the urge to check that he’s still breathing.

                “Steve,” says the Soldier, because Bucky is speechless.

                “Should I- Should I call the police?” asks the waitress, and Steve turns to assure her that everything is fine and Bucky pockets the knife and is out the door before Steve can turn around again. The shout of “Bucky, wait!” doesn’t stop him, and the Soldier is hidden in a crowd of people waiting at the bus as Steve rushes by, anxious face searching the crowd and missing him under a borrowed cap. Bucky watches Steve jog up the street, head turning this way and that, and he watches as the bus pulls alongside Steve and beyond, safe behind the tinted windows, invisible. And if his hand is pressed against the glass long enough to leave the steamy remnants of its heat, well, maybe that just makes it feel more real.

                _Mission: kill Captain America. Objective: save Steve_ , says the Soldier, and repeats it, this time as a question. _Is this still the objective_?

                _No,_ says Bucky, _no no no no no no no_ -

 

\--

 

The Soldier wakes him at an indeterminate hour of the night, sitting in an unfamiliar kitchen and methodically eating a plate of pasta covered in cheese and sauce. It’s the best food Bucky’s tasted in a long, long time, and he’s scarfing it down before the Soldier assures him that it’s safe to eat.

                “Who’s food is this?” he asks, wincing when he realizes that he’s said it aloud.

                _There is no one here_ , says the Soldier, which is a relief because Bucky _really_ doesn’t want to come up with an excuse of why he was talking to himself and why he’s asking questions that he should know since he’s sitting there eating said food. _The food belongs to Steve_.

                “This is Steve’s house?” Bucky’s on his feet in an instant, opening the ice box and feeling his jaw drop at the amount of food that he finds there. Here he was concerned that he was eating the last of Steve’s food, and the guy had a veritable grocery store in his fridge. He was a little jealous, that someone was providing for Steve and it wasn’t him, but his knees were weak with relief that someone was providing for Steve and he was okay, he had a place to sleep and enough food and with luck there was heat in the winter and no one hogging the blankets when it got too cold and he couldn’t help that he cocooned himself when there were blankets and he certainly couldn’t help it if he cocooned himself with the warm body next to him.

                The Soldier closes the ice box and sits back down at the table, and Bucky eats mechanically because he’s still hungry but he’s still caught up on the fact that he’s in Steve’s house eating Steve’s food and there’s no one there to see him talking to himself like a crazy person.

                _You’re not crazy_ , says the Soldier. Then, _Steve will be home in approximately half an hour_.

                Bucky leaves the plate in the sink and wanders around the house – more of an apartment, really, but it’s bigger than any apartment they had ever shared in Brooklyn – and he picks up sketches and photographs and newspaper clippings and he smiles because there’s photos of Steve and the Avengers fighting and there’s also pictures of them at the beach and at a bar and Steve is smiling and as long as Steve is smiling then Bucky is happy.

                _Steve is here_ , says the Soldier unnecessarily when Bucky hears a key turning in the lock, and he’s still in the bedroom so he dashes into the kitchen and has a moment’s wish that he had cleaned his dishes after he ate as Steve enters the apartment humming softly and locks the door behind him as if it’s just another day.

                “Steve,” says Bucky, and Steve jumps a mile and Bucky is laughing and crying and Steve might be crying a bit too but that’s all right because Bucky’s getting the tightest hug of his life.

                The Soldier tenses, uncomfortable with the embrace; Bucky pulls back, suddenly aware of the proximity and how easy it would be to snap Steve’s neck with that metal hand that’s clenching into a fist at his side. _Mission: kill Captain America_ , says the Soldier, and Bucky takes another step back, shoving his metal hand into his coat pocket, where the fingers close around the ceramic knife there.

                _Objective: save Steve_ , says Bucky, and the Soldier stands down.

                “Bucky?” says Steve, and he hasn’t moved from his spot, so Bucky counts that as a win. The blonde looks concerned, so he must have been in his head longer than he had thought, but his fingers weren’t tight around the knife in his pocket anymore, so he counted that as a win, too.

                “Hey, punk,” says Bucky, because Steve was still a punk even if he was bigger than Bucky now.

                “Jerk,” says Steve, and his voice shakes on the word. It’s steady a moment later when he continues, “How are you?”

                “Fine.” Bucky eases into the abandoned chair at the table, and after a slight hesitation, Steve took the other chair across from him. They stared at each other across the table for what felt like ages of silence, and the Soldier’s unhelpful count of five minutes and thirty-two seconds in his ear had Bucky opening his mouth just to break the prickly silence if nothing else. “Steve-“

                “Bucky-“ Steve apparently had had the same idea, because they both stop mid-sentence on each other’s names, and then the silence is back, and Bucky _hates_ it, because this is _Steve_ , and he’d just spent who knows how many days – months? – running from him when he didn’t even know if he should have, didn’t even know _why_ he had, and here he was sitting in Steve’s kitchen with _Steve_ and they’re acting like Steve used to on all those double dates when he was so out of his league that Bucky had felt bad about forcing him to come.

                “Um,” says Steve. “Are you, are you hungry? I can make something, heat up some pasta, something.”

                “Pasta’s gone, I’ll pick up more tomorrow,” says Bucky automatically. But no, he didn’t need to pick up more, he’d seen a box in the cupboard during his search of the house, and he didn’t need to because Steve didn’t need him to work at the shipyards to bring in enough money for the most extravagant pasta he’d ever eaten in his life and the Soldier had found it waiting in the ice box like it had been _extra_.

                “Ah. Okay. Do you need anything? Can I-“ Whatever Steve says next is lost because there’s a knock at the door and for Bucky there is only darkness.

 

\--

 

“Don’t do that.”

                The first words out of his mouth when Bucky wakes up again are quiet, but he’s angry, really angry, and he says them again. “Don’t _do_ that.”

                _Mission compromised_ , says the Soldier, and there’s nothing telling in his voice this time, no inflections of smugness or cheer. Just emotionless, toneless words. _Mission compromised. Could not complete objective. Please reconfigure mission parameters._

                “What- No, there’s no mission, what mission?” Bucky’s lying on his back in a bed, and he can hear that incessantly loud radio through the wall again. He was back in that tiny apartment that he still didn’t know if it was his or if he was being a squatter without knowing it.

                _Mission: kill Captain America_.

                “No, no mission, mission terminated, whatever it is you say, _no_ -“

                _Mission: kill Captain America. Mission compromised. Could not complete objective. Please reconfigure_ -

                “There’s nothing to reconfigure!” roars Bucky, and the radio from next door shuts off. Someone pounds on the wall, only a few feet from his ear, and a muffled voice yells at him to keep it down. The radio comes back on, louder than ever, and Bucky is off the bed and on the other side of the room. The Soldier has a gun in his hands, and Bucky flicks the safety on and puts it on the counter with a shaking hand. There’s no food in the ice box, but there is milk, and he pours an entire glass and drinks it with the Soldier’s confused _Why are you drinking so much of it_? in his ear and Bucky doesn’t know what he’s talking about and he doesn’t _care_ because right now he’s angry and there’s nothing in his stomach but milk and he’s _tired_. “There’s nothing to reconfigure,” he repeats.

                _Confirmed. Mission parameters intact_.

                “There is no _mission_ ,” hisses Bucky, and the Soldier is silent after that. Bucky drinks the entire carton of milk, and if he throws it all back up in the tiny bathroom half an hour later, then nobody’s telling.

 

\--

 

Bucky doesn’t see Steve again because he stays away, as far away as he can by traveling on anything that has wheels and wondering why he always ended up back in Brooklyn no matter which way he went. The Soldier stays quiet and only makes a ruckus if Bucky is in a crowded space and the Soldier is trying to find the quickest route out. Bucky explains that it’s just a train and that there’s no reason to freak out about it even if the people are crowded terribly close and this time he manages to hold the entire conversation in his head and no one stares at him oddly. He wouldn’t have minded if they had moved away from him, but he didn’t want to draw that much attention to himself, so he kept quiet and ignored the Soldier’s increasingly anxious rambling about the mission. Bucky found himself repeating over and over in his head, _Objective: save Steve_ , in an endless stream until the Soldier repeated it with him, and when Bucky stepped off the train there was no more mumbling in his head from either of them.

                _What is the mission objective_? asks the Soldier, and Bucky ignores him, stalking up the dusty sidewalk in a rather hurried manner, always careful to keep a distance between himself and anyone else walking up the street. _What is the mission objective_?

                _Save Steve_ , says Bucky savagely, hands jammed into his pockets and the knife is in his hand again. _Mission objective: save Steve. It’s always been save Steve, it will always be save Steve. There is no other mission objective_.

                _You cannot save Steve if you do not have visuals_.

                Bucky laughs, and it was not a happy sound. _I’m not saving Steve from something else,_ he informs the Soldier, _I’m saving Steve from_ you.

                _My mission is your mission. Save Steve_.

                _Your mission is to kill Captain America. Captain America is Steve. I have to save Steve_.

                Bucky is sitting on a park bench, and he supposes it must have been the Soldier who sat down, because he certainly didn’t. “Just like that,” he murmurs, low enough that he can hear but not loud enough that the woman pushing a screaming baby in a stroller passing by can understand him. “Don’t do that.”

                _Discontinue mission save Steve_?

                “No! No. Mission: save Steve. Highest priority, okay? Save Steve. Steve has to be safe. But _you_ have to stop doing that, that thing, where I disappear and you do stuff. Stop.” Now Bucky knows he sounds crazy, because there’s nothing weirder than a guy sitting on a bench talking to himself. A park bench. That he didn’t remember seeing before. “Where are we?”

                _Two blocks from the train station. What have I done wrong_?

                “Save Steve Rogers,” mutters Bucky. “That’s the only mission I have. And I can’t do that from next to him because I can’t trust myself because I can’t trust _you_.”

                What? Shock colours the Soldier’s voice. _You can trust me_ , he insists, but Bucky is shaking his head, no no no.

                “I can’t, I can’t, you do things when I don’t tell you too and you’re dangerous and _I_ _can’t let you hurt Steve_.”

                _Mission: kill Captain America. Mission: save Steve Rogers. Mission objectives conflict. Mission objectives conflict_.

                Bucky presses a hand to his forehead, his flesh hand, feels the heat of his forehead and wonders if he has a fever, if he’s hallucinating the voice in his head, if he hallucinated the train ride, hallucinated _Steve_. But when he opens his eyes, the park bench is still under his butt and his ankle still hurts because combat knives were make for handling not for shoving into boots in the multiples and he still has someone in his head that doesn’t belong there.

                Or maybe _Bucky’s_ the one who doesn’t belong.

 

\--

 

His hair is too long. His beard is too long. Under all that hair, though, it’s his face, Bucky’s face, and it’s Bucky’s hand on the razor as he carefully scrapes the stubble from his chin. Bucky is sitting in Steve’s bathroom, using Steve’s shaving cream and Steve’s razor because Steve is the only one who still uses a straight razor and Bucky doesn’t know how to use anything else.

                The Soldier is indifferent to the shave, just as he was indifferent to the shower that Bucky indulged in. It had been a short shower, since the Soldier was anxious the longer he was unarmed, exposed, so Bucky just rinsed off the worst of the dirt and spent the other five minutes working soap through his hair. Steve’s brush took out the worst of the tangles, and a liberated shoe lace from a dusty pair of loafers in the back of Steve’s closet held the longest bits out of his eyes. There were uneven sections that swung loose, but they didn’t bother Bucky and the Soldier didn’t complain so Bucky left them as they were. The Soldier meticulously cleaned the sink of lingering beard clumps and Bucky hung his towel up to dry, and the Soldier went through Steve’s closet for anything that might fit.

                Dressed in too-tight jeans and a too-tight shirt, dirtie hoodie pulled over everything and toes wriggling in clean – clean! – socks, Bucky tosses his dirty clothes in the dumpster and pretends he didn’t remember the guy he’d stolen them off of in the first place. Bucky finds another plate of pasta in the ice box, already covered in sauce and cheese, and he eats it, because the Soldier tells him it’s safe and it’s Steve so of course it’s safe anyway. Steve doesn’t return, and his shield is missing from the bedroom, so Bucky lies down on the bed and closes his eyes, just for a moment-

                - _pain screaming needles pain hands holding him down so much pain make it stop make it stop no no please no stop I won’t do it again please no please don’t hurt me I won’t do it again please please no no no no stop_ -

                -and Bucky sits up bolt right, chest heaving for breath and hands shaking and he’s holding the gun and the Soldier is screaming in his head and Steve is standing in the doorway to the bedroom, eyes wide and his shield in one hand and Steve Rogers is still wearing his Captain America uniform and the Soldier _won’t stop screaming_.

                “Shut _up_ ,” Bucky snarls, and the Soldier drops dead silent in an instant, and Bucky wonders why he feels regret at that but it doesn’t matter right then since Steve is _still_ standing in the doorway, stock-still, and Bucky realizes it’s because Bucky’s still crouched on the too-soft bed and the gun is still leveled on Steve.

                _Mission: kill Captain America_ , says the Soldier.

                _Mission: save Steve_ , Bucky snaps back, and lowers the gun. He’s still shaking, can’t stop, but he doesn’t know if it’s him or it’s the Soldier because there’s a keening noise in his ears and suddenly it’s not in his head it’s in his _ears_ and it’s the Soldier making that noise from Bucky’s mouth and Steve is so, so far away-

                _Sorry, Bucky_ , says the Soldier morosely, and everything goes black.

 

\--

 

Bucky doesn’t remember why he’d gone to Steve’s apartment in the first place anymore. When he wakes up, he’s still lying on the bed, but Steve is gone, and so is the Soldier. The apartment is quiet, and Bucky isn’t shaking anymore when he crawls to his feet and pads into the living room, knife in hand and fingers curled in a fist, but there’s no one there, just a note on the counter from Steve that says there’s been an emergency and he swears he’ll be back as soon as he can and if Bucky is hungry then there’s more pasta in the refrigerator, that he understands if he doesn’t eat it and if he isn’t there when Steve gets back but Steve would really like it if he did, and if he was.

                The note isn’t signed, but it’s from Steve, in Steve’s handwriting, so Bucky eats the pasta – does Steve eat anything but pasta? – and wanders around the apartment until there’s a huge explosion outside and the Soldier is out the window and down the fire escape to the street, running towards the plume of smoke and Bucky has a gun in his hand when he skids around the corner and finds smashed cars and screaming, running civilians and Captain America is standing in the middle of the street and there are _so many men_ running and shooting and there’s no way the shield can protect him on all sides at once.

                Bucky’s metal arm is up and the gun in his hand is firing and suddenly there’s less men shooting at Captain America but now there are more men firing at _Bucky_ and the Soldier whips up another gun and he’s running again, still cutting down targets but then the guns are out of ammo and all the extra bullets are sitting on Steve’s counter by the butter and the Soldier is slamming shoulder-first into the nearest man, snapping his neck with a practiced twist and liberating the machine gun from the man’s clinging hands.

                There’s more men, spilling from the bank across the street, and there’s a big red metal man falling from the sky and the metal man can _fly_ and Bucky can focus on the newest rush of black-suited men that seem intent on keeping him from reaching Steve but the Soldier is good, very good, and he’s broken through the stream and Bucky has his back to Steve’s and they’re taking down anything that comes at them and for an instant Bucky can almost believe that they’re back in the war.

                Steve throws his shield, taking out a pistol-wielding soldier who had gotten through the fray, and he misses the little black grenade the man tosses that rolls to rest at Bucky’s feet. The shield rebounds, is flying back, and Bucky has three bright red seconds to make a decision.

                _Mission: save Steve_ , says the Soldier, and a metal arm flies up, snatching the shield from midair and dropping it with all his weight behind it on top of the grenade. A split second of Steve’s horrified face is all Bucky has before the grenade goes off and the entire street collapses around his ears.

 

\--

 

_pain screaming needles pain hands holding him down so much pain make it stop make it stop no no please no stop_

 

\--

 

_you can’t make me do this no no I can’t I won’t no please stop no_

 

\--

 

_pain screaming needles pain a voice there’s a voice through all the pain “You’re going to change the vorld, Sergeant Barnes” no no no that’s not his name that’s not his name he doesn’t have a name what is his name what is what is_

 

\--

 

_pain needles more pain cold cold cold_

 

\--

 

The Soldier is yelling at him again. That’s all Bucky can hear through the ceaseless ringing that won’t go away, is the Soldier yelling at him. The ringing is getting quieter, but the yelling is making it loud again. The voice is getting quieter, though, a pleading tone instead of an angry one, and then that too fades away into nothing and there is nothing nothing nothing nothing

 

\--

 

The Soldier opens his eyes, and it’s the white room again, too many bright lights reflecting off the too-white walls and he knows what’s coming next, oh, he knows, and the Soldier closes his eyes because he’s tired of sitting through it with his eyes open, he’s so, so tired-

                “Bucky,” says Captain America, and the Soldier’s eyes fly open. The Mission is sitting in a chair next to his bed – the Soldier is in a _bed_ , an actual _bed_ , not strapped into a chair, there is no chair, no straps, no chair – and the Soldier can feel the pillows tucked under his back to keep him propped up and it reminds him of seeing Captain America lying in the hospital bed after the Soldier had fished him out of the river.

                “Hey,” says Captain America. “Bucky. Can you hear me? The doctors said they weren’t sure how well your hearing would recover-“

                “I can hear you,” says the Soldier, and Captain America’s face breaks into the most relieved smile. He isn’t armed, there’s no shield, no uniform, just Captain America. _Mission: kill Captain America_. But Captain America is Steve. And Bucky’s mission was to save Steve. “Bucky.”

                “Yes, that’s your name,” says Captain America, and his face is twisting, and the Soldier can’t stand it.

                “You want to talk to Bucky,” says the Soldier, and now the twisting is just confusion and pain, and the Soldier says again, this time as a question, “You want to talk to Bucky?”

                “Yes,” says Captain America, and the Soldier closes his eyes and searches.

                “He’s not here right now,” says the Soldier finally, opening his eyes and feeling his mouth turn down a little at the corners. “He’s sleeping.”

                “Bucky is sleeping?” repeats Captain America, and the Soldier would laugh at his confusion if it didn’t make his head hurt so much.

                “I’ll tell him you wanted to speak with him,” says the Soldier, and he closes his eyes again. He has been compromised, and if Captain America is in the white room and there is a _bed_ with _pillows_ then the Soldier is out of his league and he needs Bucky but Bucky is asleep so maybe the Soldier should be too.

 

\--

 

 _Steve wanted to talk to you_.

                Bucky frowns, opens his eyes, brow furrowing as his eyes take in all the bright white that seems to make up the entire room. “What,” he says, and his voice breaks, and he coughs.

                _Steve wanted to talk to you_ , says the Soldier, _but you were asleep_.

                “How do you know that if I was asleep?” asks Bucky, curling and uncurling the fingers on both hands and feeling moderate satisfaction when they both respond okay.

                _You were asleep. I was not_.

                Bucky’s mouth twists in a grimace and he’s coughing too hard to speak. The door to the room opens and admits a slim woman in a white uniform, and to Bucky’s blurring eyes from the tears streaming from them the woman’s head and hands look like they’re floating in a sea of white. The Soldier stirs, but a hiss from Bucky gets him to stand down.

                The woman in white gets him to drink something clear but doesn’t taste like water, and the Soldier grumbles that it’s drugged but Bucky swallows it anyway, because his throat hurts and his head aches and the tears and coughing have barely stopped when there’s a commotion out in the hall the woman in white gets concerned and Bucky can’t help being relieved when the door flies open and Steve tumbles into the room, an angry-looking man holding a clipboard following him and quietly admonishing him for something that Bucky can’t quite catch.

                “I just need to see him-“ says Steve, and Bucky says his name, his voice more of a croak, so he clears his throat – oh, it _hurts_ – and tries again.

                “Steve.”

                Steve finally looks up, meets his eyes, and he steps past the fluttering man with the clipboard like he doesn’t exist and Steve is standing next to his bed looking down at him with that heartbreaking gaze and Bucky smiles up at him. “Hey, Steve.”

                _Mission: save Steve_ , says the Soldier, and Bucky gives a start, he’d almost forgotten about the voice in his head that wasn’t his own. _Mission: save Steve_ , repeats the Soldier. _Objective achieved_.

                _Mission: save Steve_ , Bucky tells him, _is never, ever over_. And he’s smiling at Steve, and Steve is smiling back and if he can’t talk anymore because his throat hurts then he can talk in other ways so Bucky reaches out and takes Steve’s hand in his own and everything is perfect.

 

\--

 

Everything is not perfect, but it’s still perfect. Bucky doesn’t know how to explain that to Steve, or to Fury, or to Natalia, or to the endless lineup of psychiatrists who don’t understand, or to the enraged man with wings whom he had ripped from the sky who tells him quite loudly and too close to his face that if he ever hurts Steve again then the man with the wings will take him out behind the nearest restaurant and put him through a meat grinder.

                Steve had gotten that pinched, concerned look, and Bucky had laughed and pushed the man with wings – Sam, his name was Sam – away before saying that he wouldn’t let anyone hurt Steve because Steve was his mission. Those words had made the pained look on Steve’s face worse, and Sam had narrowed his eyes, and the Soldier had tensed in the dark, but Bucky laughed again and shoved pasta in his mouth and the moment was gone. They eat a lot of pasta, because Bucky likes it and it’s easy to make, and sometimes they go out to eat and sometimes Steve makes pie and on those nights Bucky wishes he could die right then and there because there is nothing more satisfying than Steve’s apple pie.

                The Soldier is the one who sleeps now, and Bucky is the one awake. He doesn’t sleep much anymore, because he’s been sleeping for so, so long and all that time he could have spent watching Steve is being made up in the here and now. The psychiatrists try to get him to talk about what the Soldier did, but Bucky just shakes his head and tells them that he doesn’t remember, or tells them the little things like the ties and the flirting that he does remember and that are definitely not what they want him to talk about.

                After a particularly unhelpful session, Bucky is referred to a Dr Bruce Banner, who sits with him in Steve’s kitchen around a meal of Thai food with Steve in the adjacent room - watching television or sketching, Bucky doesn’t know which but it’s one of them – and Bruce tells him about his Other Guy and how sometimes they coexist and other times it’s all the Other Guy behind the wheel. Bucky tells Bruce about the Soldier and how Bucky would help him on his missions, and the Soldier gets concerned and Bucky blacks out for a minute but when he comes to, Bruce is smiling and nodding so Bucky smiles hesitantly in return and there are no more fancy psychiatrists after that.

                The Soldier sleeps in the back of Bucky’s mind like a slumbering dragon, and doesn’t stir unless Bucky asks him to. Bucky doesn’t ask often, unless there’s an emergency – _jesus fuck christ how do I pick a lock I’m locked out I’m locked out help me_ – or he needs to fight someone – _fucking useless how could I have let him leave me behind I can’t do this I can’t I can’t I have to help him I can’t leave Steve out there alone no please help_ – and somehow he knows what the Soldier knows and in that moment he can do what needs to be done.

                Bucky doesn’t forget things anymore. Everything he learns from the Soldier sticks with him, which can be helpful but it also _sucks_ because the more he knows about the Soldier the less he wants to know and the less he sleeps because when Bucky sleeps the Soldier sleeps and when no one is in charge then the nightmares creep in and all Bucky can hear is the Soldier’s screams ringing in his ears and there’s the touch of needles on his skin and he panics. Sometimes Steve is there to wake him up, but other times it isn’t Steve, it’s Captain America, and the Soldier is still confused about the mission, and Bucky will wake up crouched over Steve on the floor with his metal hand wrapped around Steve’s throat and Bucky will panic all over again.

                Meditating with Bruce helps. They sit for hours on the roof of Tony’s tower, listening to the wind howl and the tiny beep of car horns far below, the screech of sirens as some emergency or another summons the police or the ambulances or the fire trucks. Bucky talks with the Soldier for hours while Bruce is next to him in their calm space, and sometimes Steve joins them on the roof with his paper and pencils, and the scratch of graphite on paper is familiar and soothing.

                The Soldier sleeps more and more, and sometimes Bucky can’t wake him, and sometimes the Soldier can’t wake Bucky, and other times neither of them will wake because the bed is warm and soft and it is easier to sleep than it is to wake up and face whatever punishment this disobedience will bring. There is no punishment, and Bucky sleeps in past noon when he wants to, and he cooks lasagna for Steve when he’s had enough of spaghetti but not enough of pasta, and sometimes when they leave the window open on cool nights Bucky sits a little closer to Steve than strictly necessary and on the best nights Steve will put his arm around Bucky’s shoulders.

                Steve still pulls that unhappy face sometimes, when Bucky is too quiet or when the Soldier wakes up instead of Bucky, or when he thinks Bucky isn’t looking. He isn’t the same Steve Rogers who fought to join an army that didn’t want him the way he came, and he isn’t the same Steve Rogers who put on a uniform and fought for what he felt was right even when his superiors wrote his friends off as a lost cause.

                Bucky doesn’t mind, because he isn’t the same Bucky who enlisted to keep Steve out of war, and he isn’t the same Bucky who picked up a shield to protect his best friend and got blown off a train because of it.

                He’s the Bucky who loved Steve Rogers when the army didn’t want him.

                He’s the Bucky who loved Steve Rogers when he picked up a shield to defend him.

                He’s the Bucky who loved Steve Rogers when he wouldn’t give up on Bucky even when the Winter Soldier was doing his damnedest to kill him.

                He’s James Buchanan Barnes, he loves Steve Rogers. He loved him when he was a little punk getting the crap beat out of him for standing up for what he believed was right, and he loved him when he was a big punk still getting the crap beat out of him for standing up for what he believed was right.

                He’s the Winter Soldier, because in some ways he is and in other ways he isn’t, but the Soldier kept him alive and took him home to Steve and for that Bucky will be forever grateful.

                He’s the Winter Soldier, because you can’t take away the years of torture and training and the metal arm at his side, because Bucky knows what his hands did, what they’re still capable of, and maybe he doesn’t mind that at all, because in the end, he’s still Bucky.

                He’s Bucky, who is never going to touch Captain America’s shield again because every time he does he tries to protect Steve and he almost dies in the process so maybe that’s an omen that he wasn’t meant to be the bearer of that cross so he’s Bucky who will fight from the side with his guns and knives and fists.

                He’s Bucky, and he’s going to use every skill he knows and everything he has, because his one and only mission has always been, with all his heart, to love Steve Rogers.

                Even a Russian winter can’t freeze that out of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the wonderful comments! <3 This chapter is dedicated to Phoenix, who requested more, and also to you, because you're reading this.

Bucky likes his hair long. The Soldier is indifferent to the length, doesn’t care if it’s long or short or gone – it’s been all of those things, one time or another – and Bucky likes it best when it’s long and curls over his ears and tickles his neck and shoulders.

                Sam calls him a hippie and tells him to get a haircut, Natalia – no, she’s Natasha now – offers to teach him how to French braid it, and Steve just gives him that insufferably patient look that means Bucky can do whatever he wants and Steve will be fine with it but Steve is still in love with the old Bucky, the clean-shaven, short-haired smooth-talker from the war who could charm the pants off of any willing lady. Now the only pants he’s charming off are Steve’s, and the rest of the world be damned.

                “Do you want a haircut?” Steve asks him over breakfast one day. Bucky is shoveling pancakes into his mouth and they’re the best pancakes he’s ever eaten and sometimes he really just wishes that Steve would be quiet and let him eat in peace. “It’s all right if you don’t, I mean,” Steve continues, and Bucky groans and puts down his fork.

                “I like my hair,” says Bucky, pointing the knife in his right hand at Steve. “I like it just the way it is, thank you very much. It’s long and it’s warm and it’s mine and I can do what I want and I swear, Stevie, if you don’t stop psychoanalyzing me over breakfast I’m going to catch one of those blasted pigeons from the square and lock it in your room.” And he picked up his fork again. He felt a twinge of guilt at Steve’s alarmed face, the little twist of concern, and Bucky keeps his gaze leveled on his plate and mechanically continues eating.

                Steve is quiet for the rest of the meal, and when they’re both finished, he washes the dishes – by hand, the dishes they dirtied between the two of them didn’t warrant a fancy automatic dishwasher – and he puts on his coat to go out.

                “Wear the helmet if you’re riding the bike,” says Bucky, same as always, small and spiteful because motorcycles are dangerous and the worst accidents always happen when you don’t wear a helmet and Steve never seems to wear his at all, so he’s a little surprised when Steve wordlessly snags the dusty helmet from the closet and walks out the door. No goodbye, not even the useless pleasantry of a “have a nice day.” It hurts, a little, but Bucky reminds himself that Steve Rogers is a grown-ass man who can take care of himself and doesn’t need Bucky fretting over him like a mother hen.

                Which he does. A lot. More than he should, really. Now that Steve was big and strong and could fight all the bullies himself, Bucky didn’t have to worry about walking down a street and peering into dark alleys in high hopes that he _wouldn’t_ find Steve lying in a puddle of his own blood or still getting the stuffing knocked out of him. Bucky found himself worrying about other little things, like making sure Steve wore a helmet while riding and that he ate enough and that he didn’t get shot in the back by some lucky sniper during a fight – because hell nor high water would stop Bucky from fighting side by side with Steve, even if he spent most of his time in a high vantage point taking out the enemy through the fanciest rifle he’d ever seen that Tony had handed to him one night and told him to “test it out” and the gun had never made it back to Tony’s – and making sure that Steve talked to someone because even if Bucky was the one with two personalities inside his head that were full of nightmares and the occasional confusing blackout, it was Steve who had watched his best friend fall from a train to his death and it was Steve who had piloted a plane into a frozen wasteland and it was Steve who had fallen off a crashing helicarrier into the Potomac and hadn’t tried to fight his way back to the surface.

                Steve Rogers was a bigger mess than Bucky Barnes, and that was saying something.

 

\--

 

 

Bucky talked with Bruce, who told him that he couldn’t deal with Steve’s monsters because they were the kind that lived in Steve’s head with him and weren’t the separate kind like the Other Guy and the Winter Soldier. Bucky talked to Natasha, but she had her own demons to deal with and couldn’t be in Washington DC for more than a few days before she had to disappear again. Bucky talked to Sam, and in Sam he found a lifesaver.

                Steve had taken Bucky to one of Sam’s meetings, with the other traumatized soldiers who needed to deal with the aftermath of the war, somehow make sense of their lives off the front lines. Bucky had sat through the entire meeting in silence, but Steve had left partway through, patting Bucky’s shoulder reassuringly before he left and whispering a promise that he’d pick him up after the meeting. Sam had shot Bucky a knowing look, but hadn’t said anything until after the meeting.

                “You know, he’s got a lot more problems than you,” Sam had said as the last of the other veterans had filed out of the room, leaving Sam and Bucky alone. “Your boy,” Sam said, jerking his chin at the door. Bucky couldn’t stop himself from looking, but Steve wasn’t there. Sam laughed at him, but sobered quickly. “You’re handling this really well, which is surprising and scary as hell, but Steve? He isn’t handling this at _all_. You’ve gotta talk to him, man.”

                “You have to talk to him,” Bucky had said. “Please. He won’t- It’s not the same, from me. He thinks that since I always took care of him that now it’s his turn to take care of me, but I still need to take care of him and he won’t let me.”

                Sam had sat back in his chair, face impassive. “And you think I can help him when you can’t?”

                Bucky knew, because Sam could talk down a frightened war vet who’d heard a door slam and thought they were under attack, because Sam could keep calm when the Soldier held a knife to his throat and Sam still let him have a piece of cake when he’d talked Bucky back, and most of all because Sam went running with Steve every morning as the sun came up and he didn’t ask anything more than that. “You’re his friend.”

                “Yeah, and as his friend, I’m saying this is a dumb idea. Steve needs help, and he needs to deal with all of his own crap, but I can’t force him to do that, and he’s already told me he doesn’t want to do the meetings, the talking.”

                “He’ll come to the meetings,” said Bucky firmly, “and you’ll talk to him.”

                “If you can get him to sit through an entire meeting, then I’ll talk to him,” Sam had said, and Bucky took that as a promise. If Sam was surprised a week later when Steve joined Bucky in the back of the room, he didn’t let it show, even if he did ask later how Bucky had managed to talk the big blonde around. Bucky had just smiled at him.

 

\--

 

Bucky’s best friend after Steve – because everyone came after Steve, even Bucky – was Tony Stark. Steve didn’t always get along with Tony, but Bucky had a soft spot for the annoying, pretentious little man who could make anything out of nothing and always had some new electronic gadget for Bucky to try out. Tony had sent them an enormous box done up in ribbons and bows for Christmas, and when they had opened it Steve had cursed like a sailor and sworn to strangle Tony with the crumpled bows on the floor – which Bucky still had in his room, months later – and Bucky had laughed long and hard because Tony had given them an entire box full of penis-shaped macaroni. It probably had to do with the only two meals Tony had ever eaten with them being pasta-based and probably with the fact that Bucky and Steve were idiots in love but in the end it was Tony saying he loved them even if they _were_ idiots and if that love came in the shape of inappropriate pasta then Bucky would take it as it came.

                Tony didn’t mind Bucky taking his guns apart on the floor of his workshop to see how they worked and how best to keep them in prime condition, or the endless supply of questions about the weapons themselves and their components, and if there was a question too dumb for Tony then he’d point Bucky to JARVIS and the computer would sigh all too humanly and inform Sergeant Barnes that he would gladly search for whatever answers Bucky might require.

                Tony had laughed and offered to tune up Bucky’s arm while he was there, and Bucky only turned him down until Tony admitted to scanning him on his last trip and having a few prototype arms kicking around the workshop. Bucky’s initial anger dissipated the moment he saw the arms, because they were beautiful and clean and had none of the Soldier’s pain worked into the very grooves and Tony had told JARVIS to give them whatever paint job Bucky wanted.

                Steve had given a start when Bucky set the table around the arrays of paperwork that Steve was meticulously reading through – profiles for new Avengers, none of them very old and all of them unsuitable so far – and Steve had taken his metal hand in his own warm one and curled his fingers around the cold steel.

                “Do you like it?” Steve had asked, like that was the most important thing, and Bucky had stared at him, because he could _feel_ the fingers stroking his palm, and in that moment he knew his best friend – besides Steve, always beside Steve - was Tony, because Tony hadn’t told him that this arm was perfect and metal and real and that all the hours Tony had spent installing the new shoulder plate had been worth every agonizing second on the table because Bucky could feel Steve’s fingers on his cold metal hand.

                “Yeah,” was all Bucky said, and he was smiling, and he didn’t let go of Steve’s hand.

 

\--

 

Bucky tested the arm for touch, dexterity. The Soldier tested the arm for strength, power. Bucky broke the bathroom sink when he slipped on the wet floor and grabbed it for balance, the Soldier bounced back to his feet with just his hand, and Bucky never slipped in the bathroom again.

                While Steve was in the kitchen, washing the greasy pan from a decadent meal of macaroni and cheese with three kinds of cheese and whipping cream in the sauce, the Soldier traces a perfect star onto a piece of printer paper and slices out the center with a kitchen knife. Bucky sets out the red auto paint liberated from the repair shelf in the garage – because new bike or not, Steve’s motorcycle still needed the occasional touch-up, and Tony always insisted that red was the way to go, even if Steve never agreed – and when Steve comes in with the bowl of strawberries he’d picked up on the way home as a surprise he finds Bucky on the floor, waiting, stencil in hand and paint mixed and ready at his feet.

                “Are you sure?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods, and puts the stencil in Steve’s hand.

                “I want you to do it,” says Bucky, and Steve’s eyes are sad, because he doesn’t understand, but Steve puts the paper on Bucky’s shoulder and smoothes the red paint in clear, flat strokes, and the red star is back on Bucky’s shoulder where it belongs. Steve is sad, because he doesn’t understand that the star isn’t for broken memories of a frozen world ruled by pain and fear, that the star is for new memories and blood and revengre.

                The star doesn’t belong to HYDRA, it doesn’t belong to Russia, it doesn’t belong to some bastard named Pierce who had tried to break him and failed.

                The star belongs to the Soldier, and it belongs to Bucky.

                Someone had slapped that star on the Winter Soldier’s metal shoulder to tag him, to claim him, to mark him as a Soviet death knell that would stop at nothing to fulfill the mission. The star was pain, it was pride, and it was meant to mark the Soldier’s allegiance to the one who had placed it there.

                Tony hadn’t put a star on any of the arms he had made for Bucky, and Bucky hadn’t asked JARVIS to paint one on for him. Bucky had asked Steve to paint on the new star, red as the old one with Tony’s colours, because with all his heart, Bucky belonged to Steve, and the only one he was giving allegiance to was Steven Grant Rogers.

                This star was red because it stood for all the pain and blood on the Soldier’s hands, all the pain and blood that HYDRA would pay for by those same hands. It was red because that was the colour they would bleed as the Soldier broke them quicker and more merciful than they had broken him, because it was red like Tony’s armor was red and Tony had done nothing but kindness to the Soldier even when the Soldier and HYDRA had taken his parents from him. It was red because the star on Steve’s uniform was white and untarnished and the Soldier was all tarnish and blood, and the blue wouldn’t fit because Steve’s eyes were that blue and that was the only blue that Bucky needed.

                It was red because this star was Bucky’s, and when his trail was done he’d paint it all the colours of the rainbow if he wanted because the Soldier was free and Steve was alive and all the colours the human eye could see weren’t bright enough, weren’t good enough for the feelings in Bucky’s chest that threatened to drown him every time he looked over and saw the light catch on Steve’s hair or the hint of a smile of Steve’s mouth or the hint of mirth in Steve’s eyes when he finally, finally laughed.

 

\--

 

They tried to make his uniform blue, a lovely dark blue like his old army jacket that complimented the Captain America uniform perfectly. Bucky had turned them down, because black was better for skulking in shadows than blue, and the last time he’d worn those colours, bad things had happened, and maybe – just maybe – he was getting superstitious about those little things in his old age.

                Not that he was really that old. Older than Steve, older by a few years and now more than a few between Steve’s Sleepy Beauty in the ice and the Soldier’s abbreviated stints through time, but not really that old. Old enough to feel justified with annoyance at this new century with its fancy gizmos and shiny lights and food more expensive than a week’s pay, but not too old that he couldn’t charm an extra croissant off the dame at the bakery if he wanted to.

                Steve gave him sad, puppy dog eyes of disapproval, but Bucky was a charmer at heart and wouldn’t pass down a golden opportunity like a free croissant if he was feeling lucky. Steve could have gotten all the free cupcakes he wanted from that same lady, if he had just worn the uniform while they ordered their impromptu lunch. Bucky had laughed the first time someone had given Steve a meal free of charge, when they’d eaten at a restaurant after a big fight with a terrorist with daddy issues and hadn’t had the time or willpower to go home first and change into civilian clothes. Steve had been mortified and had left a tip in the jar at the counter that was bigger than the meal had been worth and still couldn’t go to that restaurant without paying in tips because they would never accept his money otherwise.

                Bucky had just eaten his burger and flicked a French fry at Tony and couldn’t stop _laughing_ because they were all alive and fine and Steve was concerned about everyone even if he didn’t know them. Bucky’s non-descript black uniform – suspiciously close in style to the Soldier’s old kit but it was comfortable and Bucky liked it anyway – didn’t catch any glances the way Captain America and Iron Man did, although the arm did cause a few stares and suspicious murmurs.

                Those were the moments when Bucky truly appreciated the length of his hair because it hung easily over his face and could hide him from whatever glances were shot his way. Sam could make all the jokes about it keeping his ears warm as he wanted because Bucky wasn’t comfortable with the stares but he was comfortable when he was hiding so he was fine. Steve had bought him hair ties after riding in Tony’s convertible and Bucky’s hair had whipped all over and into his eyes and they had almost crashed and Bucky kept a few spares in the ammunitions pouch on his belt just in case, but he didn’t use them unless it was windy or raining or Steve got too miffed with him pushing his bangs out of his face.

                “Thanks,” the waiter had said, a coffee pot in hand and a tired smile that wasn’t quite pasted in place but wasn’t far off, standing at Bucky’s elbow and refilling his mug for the third time. “For, you know, keeping those guys off the streets. I know you probably hear it a lot, but it’s us little guys who put up with the mess and the fallout, and we really appreciate you fighting for us. So, um, thank you.” He smiled again, and it wasn’t pasty this time, and wandered back to the counter to refill the coffee pot.

                Bucky had stared after him, realizing too late that he hadn’t even responded to the man, and he drank the coffee and let his comrades bicker over whether French fries were actually French or American and Steve was holding his hand under the table and the coffee mug was warm in his metal hand and Bucky was happy because Steve was happy and maybe when they were done eating he’d leave a good tip for the waiter.

                Steve squeezed his hand under the table and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear, his hand lingering on Bucky’s neck. “I love you,” said Steve, and Bucky forgets about the waiter.

                “I love you, too, punk,” said Bucky, and even Tony making disgusted noises from across the table doesn’t stop him from smiling. They’re going to another of Sam’s meetings that night, and Steve had promised to say something to the rest of the group this time, and Bucky was so very, very proud of Steve because he’s dealing and Bucky is dealing and they’re getting better little steps at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Bucky's the one with multiple people in his head, but Steve is the one who's got problems._
> 
>  
> 
> A quick mulling over the fact that Steve needs help and Bucky is fine the way he is. I'm very attached to Bucky's hair from CATWS, shhhhhh~ Speed-written the night after posting the first chapter, so it's a bit (read as: a lot) shorter, and only covers a few quick thoughts. I may write more, I may not, this universe is pretty well finished for now.  
> Not beta-read, so all mistakes are on me. 
> 
> Please let me know if there are any glaring things that read as wrong to the characters, or if there are any things you think should be added, or anything at all, really. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> _What if Bucky wasn’t the one behind the wheel, what if the Winter Soldier was some alternate identity that manifested to protect him?_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Oh wow, so that was only supposed to be like a 2k character play, and it turned into this 9k monster that ate my soul and literally wrote itself. I haven’t written in ages and now I’ve written all this Stucky fic and wow what is going on I’ve been hijacked by supersoldiers and their beautiful love story~  
> Maaaany apologies for the multitudes of run-on sentences!! Since most of this – okay, fine, all of this – is from inside Bucky’s head, it’s written from the stand-point of being inside someone’s mind. It’s never quiet, there’s always a litany of words running around, it isn’t set and structured like the way language is put on a page. ~~Or is that just my mind?? What is going on?? Oh, dear~~  
>  Not beta-ed, so any gross mistakes are all on me. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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